Why Are So Many Executives Leaving Coinbase? As Their President and COO Announces He's Next To Go, We Take A Closer Look...

Coinbase President and COO Asiff Hirji announced his departure from Coinbase today, with Emilie Choi, VP of Business and Data set to replace him.

"His experience and mentorship helped guide Coinbase through an important chapter in its history. He joined at a critical time when both the company and crypto space were going through rapid growth, bringing his extensive experience to bear when it was most necessary." says CEO Brian Armstrong.

But he's just the latest in a string of high level executives moving on, and that's raised some concerns.

Other recent departures include Chief Technology Officer Balaji Srinivasan, institutional sales director Christine Sandler, and vice president and general manager Adam White.

So, is something going wrong inside of Coinbase? I spoke with one of my contacts inside of the company, who insists Coinbase is thriving - in fact, they're doing so well, other companies want their leaders for themselves.

"It's a mixed blessing, cryptocurrency is about to take off in a big way and major instutional players from Wall Street want to be in a profitable position when it does.  That means they're turning to companies like Coinbase for talent.  If you're looking to hire someone with experience in insutional cryptocurrency investing, who based in the US - we're the obvious target."  as far as how Coinbase is performing, they add "Coinbase's success is why our employees are in high demand, our team has pulled off exactly what these other companies hope to do.  We're holding over $1 billion worth of crypto in our custody service, half of US trading volume comes from us, and the company's latest funding round valued it at $8 billion."

These claims all seem to check out, leading me to believe Coinbase really is doing just fine - for now.

Where this becomes risky is possibly being unable to replace talent leaving, with talent equally or better qualified.  So far, they seem to have been able to - but keeping talent is always preferred over taking the risks that come with replacing someone.

The faster the revolving door spins, the higher that risk goes - that's how companies have found themselves in a position where multiple departments lack proper leadership at once - the turn from 'hugely successful' to 'sinking ship' can happen in the blink of an eye.

Coinbase may need to explore increasing incentives for high-level employees to stick around.

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Author: Ross Davis
E-Mail: Ross@GlobalCryptoPress.com Twitter:@RossFM
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